DRAFT MINUTES
University Assembly Meeting
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
4:30 — 6:00 p.m.
316 Day Hall

I. Call to Order
R. Orme called the meeting to order at 4:34 p.m.

II. Roll Call
Roll was taken via sign-in sheet. Present: R. Orme, M. Fontana, M. Hatch, S. Pardo, L. Lawrence, E. Sanders, R. Wayne, K. Speiser, K. Laden, E. Strong, N. Brideau, A. Frieden, C. Robertson, A. Craig, R. Stein
Not Present: B. Liddick, J. Blair, A. Stroock, E. Loew
Also In Attendance: A. O’Donnell, E. Shin, C. Basil

R. Orme asked everyone to make sure to sign in.

III. Reports from Constituent Assemblies — SA, GPSA, EA, FS
SA — C. Basil introduced himself to the members as the Executive Vice President from the SA. He said at the last SA meeting, on Oct 2nd, the SA hosted a panel to discuss the “Amethyst Initiative” which is a proposal that would lower the legal drinking age from 21 to 18. He said the SA was also working on academic integrity issues, SAFC and by-line funding, along with a number of other small initiatives.

R. Stein added the SA was also working on initiatives that would help provide safe rides for students in order to prevent drunk-driving, provide free bus passes for undergraduates, and having a resolution on the Cornell Review and the Campus Code of Conduct. M. Hatch suggested they bring the transportation issues to TAC or the UA eventually.

C. Basil said on Oct. 2nd, they also discussed “Big Red Bikes,” a bike-sharing program where students could swipe a card to use a bike for a day. This would help reduce driving as a part of the Sustainability Initiative. He noted the SA is considering subsidizing part of the start-up cost of the program, since it is around $14,000. He said the university currently has a car share system, but said he did not believe it was a very effective system. M. Hatch said the bike-sharing program was definitely something to bring to the UA. He said it would be great if employees, graduate students, and faculty could also take advantage of the program. He also noted that “Big Red Bikes” did not come up with good information on the CU website, and suggested this be looked into.
GPSA — S. Pardo said at the last GPSA meeting, they had updates from their new Events committee chair, the Advocacy Committee, and news on the Cornell Childcare Center. They had a presentation from Dan Roth and Mike Walsh, on the President’s Climate Neutrality Committee and another from Richard Kiely from the newly established Center for Teaching Excellence. S. Pardo said R. Kiely’s presentation was beneficial to grad students as he talked about a new Master Certificate Program, mentorship, career development, and many other programs they offered that help graduate students.\\ EA — L. Lawrence said the EA is working on the President’s Address and the Energy Fair coming up on Oct 27th at Barton Hall. There will be vendors from on and off campus and the fair will focus on how people can use energy more wisely. The President’s Address will be at 12:15 p.m. E. Sanders said it would be good if the university could offer courses on this to facilities people. K. Speiser said she was on a sustainability team that will soon present a website to share best practices on conserving energy.
FS — M. Hatch said the Interim Provost was addressing a FS meeting which was going on concurrently. He reported at the last FS meeting the president had said the university was still very solvent and the fundraising was going amazingly well. The FS had an emergency session to discuss budget planning with senior staff members and deans. He said they discussed various plans that could be implemented to deal with the major declining revenues, but a final report has not come out yet. The President also gave information about the benefits of using local foods, conserving energy, using natural gas, etc. and there were also several questions raised about the sustainability issue. M. Hatch said there were opinions that energy-efficient buildings such as LEED gold buildings should be built, but the cost was very high. A short discussion followed on current campus building projects and their efficiency ratings. L. Lawrence mentioned during the EA’s retreat last summer, John Kiefer, the Director of Planning, Design and Construction gave a presentation on campus construction projects. Leon suggested the UA invite John Kiefer to one of their meetings, so they could hear updates on campus projects also.\\ R. Orme asked the members to review the meeting minutes from September 24, 2008. He then asked for a motion to approve the minutes. K. Laden made a motion to approve the minutes. M. Fontana seconded the motion. The members voted their approval of the minutes.
IV. Call for Late Additions to the Agenda\\ There were no late additions.

V. Business of the Day
� Brief reports from committees (#1) — M. Fontana asked the members who are liaisons to send him an e-mail to report what their committee was doing. E. Strong, who was the TAC liaison, said there will be a meeting next week, and bike safety is one item on the agenda. R. Wayne said there is also a meeting coming up for the CPC. K. Laden said the CJC is now fully staffed and scheduled to have their first meeting next week.

� Charter Review Committee (#2) — R. Orme said they needed to set up an Ad Hoc Committee to review the Charter since it is very out of date. He said the goal was to have a draft by January, and asked for two or three volunteers to work on this. R. Wayne said J. Blair mentioned he would be interested. L. Lawrence said he would also volunteer to help. M. Hatch asked what the plan was for the committee. R. Orme said they needed to discuss and review the “committee” section first, but would eventually look at the entire document.

� Report from Academic Integrity Drafting Committee (#3) — C. Basil said the committee recently had their first meeting. He said last spring they had began the discussion on how an Honor Code would work at Cornell. Currently, all seven undergraduate colleges were operating independently and had no leadership structure. The Academic Integrity Committee was looking to reform the system and reexamine the Code. The first meeting of all boards will begin on October 29th. L. Lawrence said a former UA member had collected quite a bit of info on “best practices” from other colleges and universities. Leon added that ABC had done a special program on cheating in US colleges and high schools and CU had been featured in it. C. Basil said the idea of an Honor Code had been considered to be added to the Code of Conduct at one point, but was not because all seven colleges did things so differently. He said that he believed having an Honor Code would have a positive effect at Cornell.

M. Hatch asked C. Basil if the SA discussed how the university-wide Integrity issue might be implemented in individual colleges. C. Basil gave an example from last semester, when an Arts and Sciences student cheated in an Engineering class. He said there was a debate as to which school was responsible and which school should punish him. He said this was because there is no understanding among the colleges and noted many rules were arbitrary and not written down. Currently, the SA was looking to bring the colleges together and their goal was to have a student run, student tried, and student reported system in the end. He noted that every other university that had an Honor Code had a student-run system. Discussion continued on some of the finer points of what infractions would be, and how long before a new system could begin.

C. Basil said that they would like to start with the change in the system at the start of the new semester and would pursue uniting boards for the next semester. Then they would work on changing the Academic Integrity Code and would hopefully implement it in the next fall.

L. Lawrence said to make sure if an honor code was written, that it was reviewed by CU’s lawyers when it was finished. C. Basil responded the committee was going to gather ideas and build the structure based on other colleges and universities honor codes, but had already planned and expected to leave the language to the experts.

M. Hatch suggested a CJC member attend these meetings in case it was ever put in the Code of Conduct. C. Basil said adding it to the Code was not the committee’s objective, most people agreed it would be better to keep it separate from the Campus Code of Conduct.

� Discussion of Cornell Review and SA Resolution (#4) — A. Craig said a resolution was brought to the SA to remove “Cornell” from the “Cornell Review” after some students were unhappy about some of the things that were said in it. He explained there was a lively debate about whether people should be allowed to say things they wanted, but in the end the resolution was not approved. He noted the resolution was online, but upon closer look, added it was not the correct version. He added there was now a committee looking at Campus Diversity, but said he did not have any updates on it. Discussion continued about the Cornell Review and the issue of freedom of speech. M. Hatch said the discussion was a good one, but suggested it continue in response to a resolution if one came about.

� Discussion of Amethyst Initiative (#5) — M. Fontana asked if minutes from the SA panel of Amethyst Initiative could be sent to list-serve.

VI. Additional Items from the Floor
M. Fontana said he and R. Wayne had met with VP Susan Murphy to discuss Peoplesoft. R. Wayne said they had developed a survey and had also called various colleges to get names of Peoplesoft users. He said they would contact them for their expectations, needs, and opinions on Peoplesoft. R. Orme said he had spoken with S. Murphy and found out she would have the results of another Peoplesoft survey by next week. R. Wayne said he was glad that students were noticing injustices such as the cheating/honor code issue and the Cornell Review discussion. L. Lawrence said he had attended the International Conference and Exhibition for the National Organization of Minority Architects in Washington D.C. last week, and was proud to announce that 12 Cornell architect students had won the 1st prize in the Design Competition for the 3rd consecutive year.

VII. Adjournment
R. Orme asked for a motion to adjourn. R. Stein made a motion to adjourn the meeting. M. Fontana seconded. R. Orme adjourned the meeting at 5:55 p.m.